6 Ways to Banish Pain at Work
The years 2020-2021 have brought about a cascade of personal challenges and changes. As a Certified Rolfer and Private Yoga Instructor, one of those surprising changes has been a huge influx of new clientele into my Brooklyn-based practice. One of the most common complaints driving people to seek care are the pains and strains of working from home - though this article is largely applicable to anyone who finds themselves sitting still for many hours per day.
My clients report brand new or worsening issues springing up in their bodies, from sciatica to stubborn neck and shoulder tension. Many of them report that working in the office involves more habitual, frequent movement: Moving from one meeting room to the next, walking down the hallway to the bathroom, running out for lunch, etc. Now, they are confined to their (often unergonomic) desk and an endless stream of Zoom meetings.
One of the first questions I ask them is about their work setup and movement habits: Do they sit in a chair all day? How high are the chair, their desk, and their computer screen? Do they oscillate between sitting and standing? Do they set aside time to exercise, walk, and take movement breaks to break up the stillness? I have found that many of them benefit from these six tips, which is what prompted me to write this article. I hope it will serve readers by offering simple, actionable items they can put into practice immediately to reduce and prevent discomfort.
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1 - Establish Healthy Ergonomics
HOW TO DO IT:
Your chair needs to be at the right height for your unique body. When you sit in it, your hips should be slightly higher than your knees. Many people have heard erroneously that their hips and knees should be at the same height, but I’ll explain below why this is incorrect. To accomplish this alignment, you can either change your chair height if it is adjustable or add firm props such as yoga blankets or a meditation cushion.
Once your chair height is established, your feet should be able to rest flat on the floor. If this doesn’t happen, then use a solid prop to bring the floor up to your feet, such as a box or yoga blocks.
Your computer should be at about eye level, and your keypad/mouse low enough to support relaxed lowered shoulders and a shallow bend at your elbow (not much more than 90 degrees). In order to accomplish this alignment simultaneously, you will likely need to get a keypad and mouse that you can physically relocate while connecting them to your computer through a Bluetooth or wired connection.
WHY IT MATTERS:
When your hips are slightly higher than your knees, your pelvis will have an easier time* rocking slightly forward (anterior in anatomy lingo). What this means is that your pubic bone should rock gently forward and down, while your tailbone gently rocks back and lifts. These actions through the pelvis should be natural and gravity-induced, not effort-induced, or you’ll be tightening your back muscles to make them happen. This alignment in your pelvis will bring a subtle forward (anterior) curve into your lower back and support the natural curves through the rest of your spine. You want to avoid the pelvis tilting backwards (posterior) which will cause the lower back to round, as this will in turn cause you to slouch and sink.
Now we come to the upper body. Remember this rule of thumb:
Where your eyes go, your spine follows.
With your computer at eye level, your neck won’t tend to flex forward, causing your heavy head to stoop down. As soon as the head drops forward of the spine, you’re adding a heavy load to your back muscles that run from your neck to your lower back, which have to strain in order to support the head. Once the head is aligned on top of the spine, you’re using the passive strength of your stacked skeleton to support the head from below, rather than the back muscles which will get tired and strained.
Bringing your mouse and keypad lower will allow your shoulders to drop down and rest over the rib cage. This alignment will save your neck and shoulders from considerable strain. I recommend exercising caution if you choose to rest the weight of your forearms/wrists on padding, as the compression paired with all-day typing and clicking could lead to issues with the nerves (such as carpal tunnel syndrome, though this is only one malady of one nerve and there are many other nerves that can get cranky when compressed and overused.)
Resting your feet flat on the floor provides increased support for the weight of your body.
When we let the feet dangle off the floor or tuck them under the chair, this squashes our hamstrings, which compresses nerves and blood vessels. Imagine doing that for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, over the course of many years, and it’s no wonder we have a proliferation of back pain, sciatica, and tight hips and hamstrings!
2 - Vary your position throughout the day.
HOW TO DO IT:
Give yourself several options for your workplace setup.
Invest in a sit/stand desk or get one of those simple propping devices that will raise your computer up, allowing you to switch to and from a standing position with ease.
Get in the habit of getting your booty on the floor! Floor-sitting is a natural human movement which utilizes entirely different joint positions as it can be done in so many ways. You can kneel, cross your shins, stack your shins, open straight legs out wide, squat down, and sit with your legs in a “Z” (one hip internally rotated and the other externally rotated) just to give a few examples.
Another great option is to get yourself a large, firm exercise ball such as those used in Pilates classes. By sitting on this instead of on your chair, you demand more engagement from your body. This gives you the opportunity to constantly and easily vary your weight distribution and joint-loading.
WHY IT MATTERS:
Remember this: Variety is your body’s best friend. Many people have lost the natural mobility in their low back, hips, knees, and ankles which is their birthright and a mark of healthy joint ranges, so tiptoe on up to the edge of what works for you currently while incorporating therapeutic practices to gradually regain your mobility. This process will take time. Be patient yet persistent.
Yoga and stretching are great options to help you progress. In the meantime, I highly recommend a firm meditation cushion that will, again, prop your hips up higher than your knees.
This creates less demand on your lower back, hips, and knees while supporting healthy alignment that is upright with ease.
3 - Get Up and Move!
HOW TO DO IT:
Here’s another rule of thumb: For every 30 minutes of sitting still, take 3 minutes to move. Leave your workstation and move your body in a variety of ways: pandiculate like a cat, stretch, do some sun salutations, look up and around, roll around on the floor, take some deep breaths, etc.
Do what feels good! Let your own creativity and curiosity guide you.
Getting a snack/glass of water or using the bathroom probably won’t qualify as adequate movement by themselves. Due to modern “conveniences”, these actions require relatively little action as far as joint ranges and muscle use.
WHY IT MATTERS:
Darling, it should be no secret that your human body was not designed to sit still at a desk all day, nearly every day, for most of your life. Your body evolved in a demanding environment which had you walking, running, climbing, lifting, building, squatting, digging, pushing, pulling, reaching, carrying water, carrying children, and so much more. This was not how you “exercised,” it was how you lived. You were constantly and literally on the lookout for food while trying not to become food, which meant you were looking around all the time to survey your environment(remember our rule of thumb that where the eyes go, the spine follows?)
The rate at which technology and social organization has changed our lives has made it so that most of us in a developed, Western nation don’t need to do very much movement in order to fulfill our basic needs. We order food from an app, with the click of a button. We have raised our living spaces up off of the floor, from our toilets to our beds and countertops, so that we rarely utilize our joints’ ranges of motion to fulfill our daily tasks. All of this contributes to what is called “Mismatch Theory” - the idea in paleo and kinesiology communities that our current common lifestyle doesn’t match our evolutionary prerogatives, which leads to all kinds of musculoskeletal, structural, and physiological dysfunctions.
These maladies have become so commonplace that we regard having bad knees and lower back pain as “normal.” They are commonplace, but they are not an expression of a healthy baseline.
You might feel like 3 minutes per 30 is a big commitment that will take away from your efficiency. Not so! Study after study has shown that giving our brains a break from focused work actually improves the quality of our work. Give yourself this time and space, and not only will your body feel healthier, but your mental clarity will improve. Double-yay!
4 - Move and breathe mindfully for at least 10 minutes per day, everyday.
HOW TO DO IT:
Move in a way that you enjoy, whether that’s jogging, yoga, strength-training, twerking or climbing trees. The key is to do so mindfully, with an awareness of your breath. Yes, I just suggested that you can twerk mindfully! Jokes aside, be aware of the minutiae of how you are moving, while you are moving, to increase your body awareness and your longevity.
WHY IT MATTERS:
Same as the logic for #3, our bodies were made to move! Focusing on the body and breath gives us a break from our thought loops.
5 - Look Deeper
HOW TO DO IT:
In my work, I recognize that the person who comes into my office is not a meat-suit with problems. We are complex creatures with emotions, needs, desires, and histories. In yoga we recognize the multi-layered being as being physical, mental, emotional, energetic, and spiritual. The process of peeling back these layers can be vulnerable and I do not believe that we are meant to do it alone, but with the support of the community and teachers/guides. Here are some questions to pique your curiosity:
How does stress show up in your body? How do you manage that?
What makes your pain better or worse? Does movement help? Does quality time with a friend or loved one make it better?
When you experience various emotions, what sensations are present in your body? Where are they?
Do you feel fulfilled and inspired by your work? By your relationships? Is there anything that needs to be reevaluated?
6 - Get help when you need it.
What constituted Physical Education for most of us growing up hardly equipped us with the self-knowledge we need to take good care of our bodies throughout the varying demands of a lifetime. Invest in learning more about your fabulous self from well-informed movement instruction: Pilates, Yoga, Dance, and Functional Strength Conditioning are good places to look. Be sure to pay attention to the amount of training an individual teacher has.
Get bodywork to help reset your soft tissues and joints. Rolfing is a type of bodywork which, when done well, combines myofascial restructuring with integrative education, which is a fancy way of saying that it will change your body alignment and functionality while bringing your brain on board as to what’s going on, so you can adopt new habits that will help the changes stick.
These six tips are actually very simple and cost little-to-nothing, depending on what household items you currently have or need to get to support healthier workstation variety, and depending on whether you take my advice on Tip #6. Yet they are extremely effective ways to undo and prevent the strain and pain of working from home.
*Some of my clients will not see an automatic change in the tilt of their pelvis by changing their hip-to-knee height ratio. This is because their habitual postural habits have been off for quite some time, distorting the natural function and structure. This kind of distortion takes consistent care and effort to undo, which Rolfing helps with.